1. Field of the Invention
The preferred embodiments of the present invention relate, inter alia, to a personal possession management system using a short range IP based Personal Area Network (PAN) and a method for managing personal possessions.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following description sets forth the inventor's knowledge of the related art and problems therein and should not be construed as an admission of knowledge in the prior art.
Portable personal possessions, such as, e.g., brief cases, ladies purses, or cameras, may be easily lost. In some cases, a person may forgetfully leave his/her portable personal possession at public places. Among other things, along with the popularization of a keyless entry system of cars, forgetting kids in a car has also increased tremendously, which is becoming a major concern particularly during extreme weather conditions.
In cases where a person is in an unsafe public space, e.g., a person is traveling in an unsafe public transportation where pick pocketing or theft is a common phenomenon, the person may have his/her portable personal possession stolen or pick pocketed.
In another situation, a person may unknowingly or accidentally loose or drop, e.g. a wallet or the like, from his/her pocket.
To cope with the aforementioned problems, several solutions have been proposed.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,297,737, issued on Oct. 21, 2001, discloses a miss-placed object locating system comprising a “locating unit” and a “locating tag.” The locating unit transmits signals to the locating tag fastened with a valuable possession. When the locating tag receives a signal, an audio alarm is sounded (This concept is also used in residential cordless phones to locate a cordless receiver). Additionally, the proposed system is bi-directional enabling the locating tag to send a signal to the locating unit to give an indication that the tagged item is nearby, which is useful when the audio alarm cannot be heard.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2002/0126010, published on Sep. 12, 2002, discloses an object locator system comprising a “finder” and “tags.” Each has a memory, and send/receive capabilities employing radio frequency (RF) signaling and is used for tracking or locating missing objects.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0034887, published on Feb. 20, 2003, discloses a system comprising a “tracking transceiver” and a “handheld locator”. The handheld locator when activated makes the tracking transceiver (attached to an article to be tracked) send back a response about its existence. From the received response, the handheld locator ascertains the distance and/or direction to the tracking transceiver.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,577,238, issued on Jun. 10, 2003, discloses a system comprising a “detector” and an “Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag”. The detector is configured to detect changes in the range of the RFID tag(s) from the detector. If the range exceeds a predetermined threshold, the detector triggers an alarm. The range may be determined by measuring (a) the round trip time of the radio signal from the tag, (b) the signal strength of the returned radio signal from the tag, or (c) the changes in a periodic interval at which a signal is transmitted by the tag.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2002/0080036, published on Jun. 27, 2002, discloses a system comprising a “parent unit” and a “child unit”. Both units are each equipped with a transceiver and a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. The child unit receives a control signal and sends a locator signal. The parent unit has a processor and can determine the position (relative direction and distance) of the child unit.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2002/0145520, published on Oct. 10, 2002, discloses a system comprising a “RFID tag” and a “receptacle with an antenna” for monitoring storage units, i.e., for tracking the removal and insertion of objects from the storage unit. The RFID tag is attached to an object to be tracked and the receptacle is housed in the storage unit. Each receptacle activates the RFID tag of the object placed in the receptacle.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,289,163, issued on Feb. 22, 1994, discloses a system comprising a “transmitter,” a “detector” (attached to a child) and a device that monitors the position of the child by detecting the signal strength of a radio frequency carrier from the transmitter attached to the child. If the radio signal is too weak, an alarm notifies the adult that the child is too far away.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0063003, published on Apr. 3, 2003, and U.S. Patent Publication No. 20050134459, published on Jun. 23, 2005 discloses a loss prevention system to prevent articles from becoming lost. The system comprises a “monitor” and “RFID tags”. The monitor broadcasts a signal to all of the tags and receives the responses from all and generates if it does not receive an alarm form any of the RFID tags. Since the signal is broadcasted to all the RFID devices, the responses are also expected to come from all at the same time and thus there are chances of collision. To overcome this problem, the patent also proposes a collision avoidance circuitry.
European Patent Application No. 1,288,878, published on Mar. 5, 2003, discloses a system comprising a “base station” and “RFID security tags”. The base station comprises a control unit and an RF transceiver. The control unit sends a monitoring signal that is received by the RFID tag. The RFID tag is inductively powered by the monitoring signal and responds with an identity signal. Because of the limited range of the monitoring signal and the identity signal, removal of the RFID security tag from the proximity of the base station causes the identity signal not to be received by the base station. Thus, when the base station sends a monitoring signal but no identity signal is received in response, an alarm is sounded.
Although the aforementioned conventional techniques may be useful to manage personal possessions in some instances, instead of locating an article after it is lost, it is preferable in many circumstances to prevent the personal portable possessions from being lost, pick-pocketed, stolen, misplaced, or left behind accidentally or forgetfully. Thus, a reliable, and state of the art system is needed to help in preventing the personal possessions from being lost.
For background reference, the following background references are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.    [1]. 802.11 Working Group Web site.    [2]. The entire disclosure of the following U.S. patent application is Incorporated herein by reference as though recited herein in full: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/379,569, filed on Apr. 20, 2006, entitled Fast Link-Down Detection Systems and Methods, to V. Fajardo, et al.    [3]. KIDSINCARS Web Site.    [4]. “IEEE 802.11b, Part 11 Wireless LAN Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) specification”, IEEE-SA Standard Board, 1999.    [5]. “IEEE 802.11g, Part 11 Wireless LAN Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) specification”, IEEE-SA Standard Board, 2003.